


Interconnect

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Child Abuse, ColdWave Week 2017, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:59:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Fate has decided that Leonard Snart and Mick Rory are soulmates.Yeah, okay, they're good with that.(for Coldwave Week 2017)





	1. Day 1: Early Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Instead of doing different fics for coldwave week, I decided to do one with multiple chapters, each based on the various days.

"What're you doing today?" Mick asks his favorite stuffed animal, a polar bear that he'd gone crazy for when they'd visited the zoo.

His dad said he was too old for them, but his mom hushed him. She was just glad he was talking more now. His older brothers thought he was just weird, talking to a bear

"Nothing much," the bear says. "I'm having trouble walking, but no big deal."

Mick nods, then frowns. "Ain't you like nearly two?" he asks. Mick's all of five, now – well, almost – and it's been two years since they met, and that means...something. 

Two plus two equals four. Mick likes the math they do at his kindergarten, if only because it's much easier than reading. The letters don’t make sense to him the way they do to the other kids. 

"Well, yeah," the bear says. "But my dad stepped on my foot and it hurts."

Mick scowls. "Why'd he do that?"

"I was crawling underfoot," the bear replies. "What's underfoot?"

"Under-your-foot."

"Oh," the bear says contemplatively. He was younger, so he didn't understand things sometimes; their conversations had gotten much more interesting when he'd figured out how to get his eyes to focus. "I wasn't, though. He came over." A pause. "He was yelling at mom again."

"That's not nice," Mick says wisely. His mom is very firm about how you should be nice to women. Especially if you're holding hands with them. Or something like that. She'd been very loud about it, anyway. "You should do something."

"I cry sometimes," the bear says. "Doesn't help, and it makes mom sad, so I stop. Maybe when I'm big, like you."

Mick nods. "You'd better get big like me," he says firmly. "Then we can play for real."

"I'd like that."

A creak of sound. Mick tenses. "Someone's coming," he says. He's learned not to talk to his bear when someone is around. Mom's okay with it, but Dad and his brothers - no. "Bye-bye." He kisses the bear on the head.

A hundred miles away, a toddler sighs audibly, a mix of happiness and sadness. Happiness, at the comforting gesture; sadness, that they couldn't talk anymore. 

"What is it, _lemele_?" his mother, Shoshana, asks. "Are you okay? Did you drop your doggie?"

She checks, but he still has his dog plush clutched tightly. He loves that dog so, she reflects; a big shaggy dog with a frankly unnerving snarl, but he'd seen it at a yard sale and shrieked bloody murder until he'd gotten it.

Lewis hadn't been happy about that, but when was he ever happy?

At least he didn't take it out on her little Len.

"Do you want me to sing to you?" she asks, disregarding the question of his adoration of the dog. He spoke to it as often as he spoke to her, but it was normal, wasn't it, invisible friends? It wasn't related to - no, it couldn't be.

"Uh-huh," Len says, cuddling his dog. "Please?" He holds up the dog. "Mick says please, too."

Shoshana smiles, and wonders where Len thought up the name Mick.

Television, perhaps?

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No!" Leo shrieks, throwing himself at his dad's feet despite knowing the danger. Sure enough, he gets a kick, right in the side, and it sends him rolling away, but he just scrambles up again, tears of pain mingling with the tears of panic rolling down his cheeks. "Give him _back_!"

"You're too old for toys," Lewis snarls at him.

"He's not a toy!" Leo howls. "He's Mick! He's my Mick!"

"He's only six, Lewis!" Shoshana protests, but she can't seem to rise up from the couch. The medicines for her sickness have made her very frail. "Let him have his dog."

"He needs to learn some respect," Lewis says. "You know what he did? Walked right into one of my business meetings - to get some water. For him? Oh no. For his _dog_. Which isn’t even _a real goddamn dog_!"

It'd been a Family meeting, too. Lewis had been horribly embarrassed by the lapse in professionalism, but more than that, he'd been afraid that they would just pull out their guns and put him in the ground, either him or his boy. He hated being afraid, hated it bitterly, and he lashed out to everyone around him, to make them afraid, because when they were afraid that meant he was in control.

Luckily the Family rep had thought Leo was cute.

"Give him back!" Leo is still shouting. 

"I'm gonna light him on fire," Lewis shouts back.

Leo goes silent, stricken with horror. He's always had a terrible fear of his dog catching fire; neither Shoshana nor Lewis had any idea where it had come from, but it was there and it was bone-deep. "No," he whispers, eyes big and wide and blue. "No, don't! Not Mick!"

"I am," Lewis says. "And maybe you'll learn a lesson!"

"It's his favorite, Lewis," Shoshana says, struggling to her feet. "Leave it alone -"

He slaps her, and she falls back into the couch and looks up at him, eyes big and wide and blue, just like her son.

Lewis feels a flash of guilt, but that just makes him angrier. He gets his lighter from the kitchen cabinet, ignoring the small boy beating at his legs and trying to stop him.

He lights the flame under a paw.

Leo shrieks as though he himself has been lit on fire, and he doesn't stop, not for air, for anything. 

"Oh, shut up," Lewis shouts, but nothing seems to penetrate. Finally, in the interest of his eardrums, he clicks off the lighter - the paw is singed, but no real damage has been done. He tosses it back to Len, who immediately goes quiet and starts checking it over and cooing at it as if it's been really hurt. "There, you have it back. Bet you learned your lesson, huh?"

Leo looks up at him, silent and solemn, his mother's eyes looking up at Lewis, reminding him silently of all his flaws, how he never gave her the life she'd hoped for, all the anger between them. 

"I wanna be called Len," he says.

"What?" Lewis asks, taken aback. It'd been a long-standing dispute - a humorous one, one of the few that generally stayed humorous and didn't escalate - between him and Shoshana, whether their little Leonard was a Leo (Lewis' preference) or a Len (Shoshana's). "How's that?"

"I wanna be called Len," Leo repeats, very slowly and very firmly. 

"Where'd that even come from?" Lewis asks, bemused. He didn't really mean it as a question - who cared? Kids were weird and had strange whims - but Leo's brow wrinkles as if he's very seriously considering the answer to the question. 

"Because," he says finally, standing up, holding his dog tightly to himself, "I hate you."

"Don't talk like that to your father," Lewis says automatically, starting to bristle.

Leo looks at him, right in the eyes, his mother's eyes solemn and serious and honest, and he says, "But it's true. I hate you."

And then he turns and he leaves the room without another word. 

Lewis stares after him for a long moment, temporarily unnerved. Leo had been so serious, so solemn, like he'd finally given up on whatever last bit of hope he'd had for Lewis. Then Lewis shakes his head and turns to the kitchen, grabbing himself a beer. 

Kids are weird, and they have whims.

Leo'll get over it.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"They're gone," Mick says to the shrink. "I _know_ they're gone."

She nods encouragingly. "That's good," she says. "Not that they're gone, your family, but that you know it. Now why don't you tell me more about Lenny?"

"What about him?" Mick asks, bewildered. "He's mine."

"He was -" she checks her notes, but Mick's pretty sure she does that deliberately; she's asked him about Lenny at every session before. "- your bear, right? A polar bear?"

"Seemed fitting," Mick says cautiously. She's getting at something again.

"And he burned in the fire, too, right?" the shrink asks. She talks to Mick like he's dumb. He knows he is; he knows that he's behind in his classes, even for an eleven year old boy. He knows that most eleven year old boys didn't have the fascination he did with fire.

He knows that most boys don't burn their whole family. 

He doesn’t like to think about it.

Maybe that’s why he hates these stupid shrink sessions.

"Yeah," Mick says. "It burned."

"So why do the nurses tell me you're still talking to him?"

"Because only the bear burned," Mick says, confused by the question. "It took a while before we figured it out, but the bear was just convenient."

Convenient, yes. Also beloved, of course. It was as close as he could get to holding his Lenny in his arms, and now it was gone. 

He was using a lamp back in his room, which worked, but it wasn't the same. 

"So you understand the bear burned?"

"Of course I do," Mick says. "I get that my family burned, I get that the house burned, I get that the bear burned."

"But you keep talking to him?"

"Well, yeah," Mick says. 

"Why?"

"Why - not?"

"Isn't Lenny the bear?"

"Lenny's only _sometimes_ the bear," Mick explains. "Lenny's dad takes away his dog sometimes - that's me; I'm the dog - and we had to figure out a different way to do things. Do you know he's got a brand new sister?"

"The...bear?"

"No, _Lenny_!" Mick says, exasperated. "And she's not quite brand new, she's a few months old now, but he keeps being really impressed by how she blows spit bubbles or something."

The shrink looks deeply confused. "Are you perhaps confusing Lenny with someone in your own family? There was a baby..."

"Nate was a baby _boy_ ," Mick tells her. He's not sure where the confusion is coming from. Maybe she's dumb like him. "Not a girl."

"I - see."

"Can I go now?"

"Sure," she says, shaking her head. "Come back after dinner and we'll do some more cognitive therapy."

She means supervised lighter time. Mick likes supervised lighter time.

He also likes dinner, so he scampers off.

He swings by his assigned room first, though. "I think she's gonna give me the green light soon," he confides into Lenny-the-lamp. "Which means foster homes."

"I've heard bad things about those," Lenny says. "Be careful. Try to palm a knife and bring it with you."

"They don't really got knives here at the hospital, Lenny."

"Well, when you get out. I don't want anyone thinking they can hurt you or take advantage or something."

"Take advantage? Of what?"

"Dunno. Something Brittany said."

Brittany was Lisa's mom. Lisa was Lenny's new baby sister. Lenny’s real mom had died a while back; they'd both mourned that pretty bad. 

She'd been a good one, Len's mom. She never told them to grow up out of it or anything, and she sang them songs, and she even told them about The Curse.

"You think I should tell the shrink about the curse?" Mick asks.

"Mom said we shouldn't tell too many people," Lenny points out. "She said people might look at us weird and act weird. Not everyone has a curse like us."

"Good," Mick decides. "I don't want everyone to have something like us."

"So don't tell. They're adults. What'll they do?"

Lenny didn't trust adults, which was fair. His dad was a pretty bad example of one.

"Okay," Mick agrees. It's not really any of the shrink's business, anyway. "I'm going to dinner."

"I'm going to my grandfather's place."

Good. That meant Lewis wasn't around. 

"Later, Lenny."

"Later, Mick."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mick can barely stand still with excitement. 

Lenny's coming.

It'd started after Lenny got set up to take the fall on a job by his old man and got sentenced to go the juvie for a couple of months. He'd been anxious as hell about it - he didn't want to leave little Lisa with Lewis - right up until he'd told Mick the name of the juvie center he was heading to, in the hope that Mick - who'd been in and out of juvie a fair few times by now - would have advice.

That's when they found out that the juvie Len was going to was the same one Mick was staying at.

They were going to _meet_.

Mick's going to get to see what Lenny actually looks like.

Of course, Mick's plans to meet him when he gets off the bus are dashed because the shrinks notice his excitement and assume he's lit something on fire, so they haul him in to an extra-long shrink session (he barely has enough time to tell Len-the-chair).

He mostly ignores their questions, which just makes it longer, but eventually they let him out.

Mick goes out and beelines to the cafeteria. 

Len-Lenny-Len- _Len_!

He finds the kids all crowded around a fight - some new kid got mouthy with one of the gangs that get formed in juvie.

Mick pushes his way forward, eyes scanning the crowd. Nothing. No feeling of recognition, no sudden awareness, nothing.

He turns his eyes on the fight right when what's-his-name, that asshole, pulls out a shiv to the impressed oohs of his companions.

Then Mick's eyes drop down to the kid held down on the floor.

Recognition.

Awareness.

_Mine!_

Mick bellow and charges forward.

Len scrambles up from the floor to help.

It's their first fight together as partners.

When it's all done, and all the kids have testified that Mick wasn't at fault, Mick and Len are finally allowed a moment's peace.

Mick scarcely knows what to do. He looks at Len - at a human being, flesh and blood, and sees the only friend he's ever known. That's never happened with a human before, only with objects that he could see Lenny in. 

"Lenny," he whispers.

"Mick," Len replies, his eyes big and wide. He's a gawky kid, all elbows and shoulders, a shrimp with a fair bit of growing to do ahead of him, with messy black hair that curled too much to be controlled, with the fading traces of old bruises making his face come off as lopsided.

He's the most beautiful thing Mick's ever seen in his life.

Mick steps forward and pulls him into his arms.

Len's arms rise around him, clutching at him tightly. 

"Mine."

Mick's not sure which one of them said it.

But it's true.

_Soulmates._


	2. Day 2: Soulmates

Not everyone went to the witches, but a lot of them did.

Oh, sure, it was technically it was illegal. The government had declared all witchcraft a fraud on consumers - they were very careful with their words, since no one wanted to be accused of being a neo-Salemist witch-hunter, but at the same time they despised the institution that by its nature resisted any regularized control. Not to mention the regular breach of certain sanitary restrictions that came along with some variants of it, and it's very hard to outlaw black-kind witchcraft and keep white-kind when even practitioners had trouble telling the difference.

But that didn't stop people from coming.

Witches didn't hand out spells and curses and potions at random, certainly not to civilians who might out them, but one thing they did do was fortunes. Fortunes for the desperate, fortunes for the rich, fortunes for the lovelorn, but most of all fortunes for children, begged for by their parents.

Sometimes, if you were lucky, that fortune came with a spell. Good luck, graceful agility, a turn with numbers, something like that.

If you were unlucky, it came with a curse. 

By all accounts, the witches never meant it maliciously, not that it helped the cursed; it was just what the fortune said.

Shoshana Snart, née Mizrahi, was pregnant with her first-born. Her husband was a policeman, with a policeman's disdain for witchcraft - nonsense for the gullible, he called it - but Shoshana's eldest sister had gotten a fortune that she'd lead the way to the promised land, and true enough it was her beauty that had attracted her American military husband, and his wealth and generosity that had helped her family come to America in her trail. 

Sometimes Shoshana wished they were back in Africa, or even in Europe where the war had scattered them, but that didn't make the fortune any less true.

Shoshana had saved up her money carefully over the last few months; she wanted a proper fortune, told over her belly, but with Lewis taking her earnings it was difficult and she was pretty far along before she’d managed it, only a week or so from her due date. 

But she'd picked a day when she knew he was going to be gone all night - longer, if he got drunk, and he usually got drunk - and here she was, at a shady little shop that pretended to sell books but never really did.

There was another woman there, also pregnant; she had dark hair and fair eyes and a worried smile, and there was a toddler sitting next to her and kicking his feet distractedly. 

Shoshana meant to keep silent, she really did, but it was never one of her strong points, as Lewis was always pointing out. Still, she could be subtle. "He's very quiet," she says.

"You're wondering why I brought him," the other woman says wryly, hitting the question Shoshana had had directly on the nose. 

Shoshana shrugs and smiles a little, ducking her head instinctively. 

"I need a fortune for him, too," the other woman says. "I know it's late for it, but the first one I got's already passed."

"What, so soon?"

"Good thing we got it, too," the other woman confides. "The fortune-teller I went to for him in Keystone - not nearly as good a reputation as the one here - he said that he'd be trapped in the flame. And he was!"

"No!" Shoshana gasps, looking at the boy, but he was fine.

"An electric fire," the other woman says. "My eldest boy playing around with outlets; it was an accident. If it weren't for all the alarms I'd installed, well..."

Shoshana nods. "I'm sorry," she says. "I know it's none of my business."

"Nonsense," the other woman says briskly. "Good curiosity's a woman's birthright. I'm Tess, by and by. Tess Rory."

"Shoshana Snart."

"Good name," Tess says. "My Mickey here -" she nods at the boy "- well, he's been too quiet ever since the fire. Doesn’t talk as much as he ought to at his age, doesn’t like people, keeps to himself and rocks back and forth a lot – normally I’d think it a blessing, me having two before him already and another on the way, but what with the fortune and all, I wasn’t sure. So I figured, why not try for another fortune?"

"Is that wise?"

"Oh, hardly," Tess says. "But I was coming anyway, for the new one, and he can't be left alone or he gets in trouble, so you know. Might as well. As long as I can afford the rate, that is." She laughs.

Shoshana likes her right away.

Then it's her turn to be called in. 

Shoshana swallows.

"Your first, eh?" Tess asks. "Don't fret. It's a lot of handwaving and burning things, but it don't hurt. And the children - well, the way I understand it, most of the time the witches are just predicting what's already bound to happen."

"And the rest of the time, they cast spells to make sure it does," Shoshana says dryly.

"Well, yes..."

Shoshana's name is called again. She waves goodbye to Tess - such a friendly woman, it's a pity she lived all the way in Keystone, not to mention how Lewis was so against Shoshana having friends - and goes inside.

The witch is a woman, unlike the one Tess had spoken of in Keystone; she's dressed quite ordinarily, in a smart summer dress and a light sweater; she has plain brown hair and eyes, and is inclined towards fatness. By and large, Lewis wouldn't bat an eyelash seeing this woman in the grocery store, which is a great relief to Shoshana.

"Sit, sit," the woman says, flapping her hands at a chair.

Shoshana sits gratefully. 

"So, a fortune is what you're after? For the babe?"

Shoshana nods. 

"Excellent," the witch says, and busies herself with her work. The first stage involves selecting herbs and strange ingredients from an array hidden behind a bookcase, glancing at Shoshana and muttering as she goes. 

"How do you know which are the right ones?" Shoshana asks. "Is it a recipe?"

"Oh, dearie me, no," the witch says. "Each child has their own set-up - astrological signs, herbs, animal parts, personality signifier - and half the job's figuring out what to go into the mix. The better fitting the ingredients, the more potent the fortune." She holds out a sprig of what smells like mint in front of Shoshana's belly, then instantly pulls it away. "Oh, no, definitely not that -" She replaces it with a sprig of basil. Nothing different happens that Shoshana notices, but the witch smiles and throws it into the pot. 

And so it goes, ingredient after ingredient, and questions to Shoshana all the while - strange questions, like her husband's shoe size and her favorite kind of tea (she didn't like any, though she was partial to hot chocolate) - until at last the witch declares herself done. 

"Oh, yes," the witch says, lighting the ingredients with a match that she also tosses in there. She puts her hands into the smoke that started to rise above the pot and draws it towards her, inhaling it. Shoshana is reminded of the lighting of the candles for Shabbat. "A strong fortune for your boy, miss."

Shoshana puts a hand to her belly. "He's a boy?"

The first ultrasound had been inconclusive, and Lewis hadn't wanted to pay for more visits. 

"Most of the time," the witch says. "As much as any of us are one thing or the other, anyway." She frowns down at her pot. "A very strong fortune, I see."

"What does that mean?" Shoshana asks. "Is that bad?"

"Bad? No. Not necessarily. Though it's not necessarily good, either. Just - strong. Your baby's going to come upon this earth like a hurricane. He'll leave his mark."

There are worse things than that, Shoshana reflects. The custom of her people was to view 'may you live in interesting times' as a curse, of course, but she'd always personally felt that to be utterly erased from this earth, subsumed by history without a trace, wasn't noticeably better.

Then again, that could just be her years with Lewis speaking. He'd certainly subsumed almost all of her into him - his wife, his name, his rules. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if he couldn't manage to do it to their baby. 

"Oh," the witch says. Her eyes have gone glassy and blank. "Oh, my child. Forgive me."

Before Shoshana can react, the witch pulls her hands out of the smoke and place them on Shoshana's belly, down low where the child sits. "I curse thee," the witch says. "Your other half is found."

And then she pulls back, leaving Shoshana confused and afraid.

"What was that?" she asks, clutching at her stomach. A curse? She didn't want a curse, not for her baby! Wasn't Lewis curse enough?! "What did you do?"

The witch's eyes clear. "I'm sorry," she says, and she seems genuinely upset. "The fortunes come like that, sometimes, and there's no stopping them."

"But what does it _mean_?"

"Well, what did I say?" the witch asks. At Shoshana's incredulous expression, the witch shrugs. "I can tell fortunes, dearie; but curses come from somewhere beyond me - speaking through me, but not from me, if you understand. I can usually interpret them, though. Was it long?"

"Ah, no," Shoshana says. "You just said - 'I curse thee. Your other half is found.'"

The witch blinks. "Oh," she says. "Oh, dear."

Shoshana considers whether punching the witch would make her respond faster. Her face is apparently clear enough that the witch edges her chair back.

"That's a rare one," the witch says. "The curse of soulmates."

The - what?

"I beg your pardon?"

"Soulmates," the witch says. "You must have heard of the concept - the one person in all the world meant for you, and all that twaddle?"

"Well, yes," Shoshana says, more confused than ever. 

"For most people, it's just a nice word," the witch says. "A pretty romantic concept, most effectively portrayed in novels and whatnot. There's a lot of people in the world, you know, and finding just the right one is almost impossible. Unless, of course, you happen to get your fortune told and your soulmate's in the immediate vicinity, in which case you get cursed."

"My baby has a soulmate?" Shoshana repeats.

"That's right," the witch says. "And he or she or they are somewhere nearby right now, too."

"I - it - but how is that a curse?" Shoshana exclaims. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"For some people it is," the witch says. "Assuming they like each other, anyway."

"But - if they're _soulmates_ -"

"That just means they're the right fit," the witch says. "Doesn't say a thing about whether they _like_ that fit. Some of history's greatest enemies have been soulmates. You can't take free will away from a person, not by anything but a curse, and that's what this is - a curse. Your baby won't have a choice about finding someone for himself, because he's already been given that someone."

"Oh," Shoshana says. It still didn't sound so bad to her. Soulmates - never ending up with a man that hit you, or ignored you, or left you feeling used... "But..."

"The curse doesn't make your baby love whoever it is," the witch explains. "Doesn't even make him like him. It just binds them together, that's all. The right fit. There's a way to break it, of course; there's always a way to break a curse."

"True love's kiss?"

"If your baby finds love with another, then yes," the witch says. "That's something of a cure-all, really. And don't start with that 'true' business; as long as it's unconditional for the time being, it'll work. I once saw a curse broken by a pair of very good friends..."

"But there's a more specific version for this curse?"

"Oh, yes."

Shoshana waited for a few seconds, but the witch didn’t seem to be inclined to elaborate. “What is it?”

“Oh, dearie me, I don’t know _that_ ,” the witch says, very unhelpfully. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you even if I did; it’s all very person-specific. If your baby decide they want to cut if off – really cut it off – then they can go seek out a witch themselves, and with any luck that witch will be able to divide a fortune for them and tell them what they need to do. It can be anything, really, depending on how fortune favors the relationship.”

“I see,” Shoshana, who did not see, says. “So – how do I know who his soulmate is?”

The witch makes a face.

“You have no idea,” Shoshana interprets.

“They’re in the area?” the witch offers. “They’ll be as bound by the curse as your boy is, so I’d imagine they’d notice. If someone comes in here with a sudden case of soulmate, I’ll be sure to let you know if you leave your number.”

Now it’s Shoshana’s turn to make a face. She really couldn’t afford to be giving out her home number and receiving calls where Lewis might notice – but on the other hand, this was her baby’s soulmate. Her little baby. A son. That’s good. Lewis might love him the way he never seems to love Shoshana anymore. 

She scribbles down her number on a small piece of paper and hands it to the witch.

“Good luck,” the witch says.

Shoshana smiles at her, a bit tightly – on one hand, a curse; on the other, soulmates – and heads out. 

“Call the next one in, will you?” the witch calls after her.

Shoshana nods and goes out. “Your turn,” she says to Tess. 

“Not go well?” Tess asks as she struggles to her feet, noticing the tightness on Shoshana’s face. 

“Not sure,” Shoshana admits.

At that moment, the little boy who’d been sitting quietly next to Tess, rocking back and forth and humming – he couldn’t be more than two, really, though he was big for his age – suddenly jumps out of his chair and scuttles over to Shoshana, holding his arms up in the universal child gesture for ‘pick me up’.

“Mickey!” Tess exclaims, surprised. “Oh – I’m sorry, he doesn’t tend to like people, but he seems to have taken quite the shine to you.”

“Up,” Mickey says stubbornly.

Tess reaches for him. 

“No!” he exclaims, pulling away from his mother and closer to Shoshana. He tugs at Shoshana’s skirt. “Up!”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Shoshana assures Tess, crouching down carefully – not easy with how far along she is. “I’m sorry, Mickey, but I can’t –” she starts, ready to explain that her belly is too big to lift him easily, but Mickey loses interest almost immediately in going up and goes instead to put his hands on Shoshana’s belly. 

“Baby,” he says.

“Yes, it’s a baby,” Shoshana says encouragingly. “Just like your mom.”

“No, _baby_ ,” Mickey insists. “My baby.”

Shoshana is startled into a laugh. “Well, isn’t that nice,” she says. 

“I’m so sorry,” Tess says. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Shoshana says to Tess, then, turning back to Mickey, she says gently, “No, Mickey; this is my baby. That over there –” she nods at Tess’s belly “– is your baby brother or sister.”

“My baby!” Mickey insists, putting his cheek to Shoshana’s belly. “Mine.”

Tess and Shoshana share a smile. 

“C’mon, Mickey,” Tess says. “Let’s go.”

“No!”

It takes some convincing, but eventually Tess manages to get Mickey to go with her into the witch’s room.

Shoshana levers herself up and goes home.

Lewis, who shouldn’t have been there until tomorrow, came back early, and he’s steaming mad about her going out without permission. They have a screaming fight about it, only for it to be interrupted, right in the middle, by Shoshana crumpling in on herself, hands grasping her stomach.

“What?” Lewis says savagely. “You think you can get out of this by playing up the baby thing? Well, let me tell you –”

“Shut up, you _stupid man_ ,” Shoshana cries out. “My _water’s breaking_.”

Lewis’ face abruptly loses all trace of anger – and, for that matter, of color. “What, _now?!_ ”

“Yes, _now!_ ” 

“But you’re not due for another week –”

“ _Lewis!_ ”

“Right,” he says, looking spooked. “Uh – we should – ”

“Car,” Shoshana says through gritted teeth. “Hospital. _Now_.”

Lewis even grabs the spare siren he uses when he’s in undercover duty to get them through traffic quicker. 

Neither of them notice the phone ringing insistently. 

The witch on the other end eventually hangs up. “I’m sorry,” she says. “No luck. Not even a voicemail.”

“And she didn’t leave an address?” Tess Rory asks the witch anxiously, clutching her toddler’s hand tightly in hers. “Is she from Central? Do we know?”

“I have no idea,” the witch says apologetically. “I’m sorry – if I’d _realized_ – I would have told her to wait – ”

“Soulmates,” Tess says, looking at her little Mickey, her quiet, troubled boy. “ _Soulmates_. I can’t believe it. They're soulmates, and they just passed right by each other.”

Mickey himself was quiet and calm, his eyes distant and lost in his own mind as it always is nowadays, after that horrible electric fire that had made him scream so badly. He’s smiling, though, which pleases Tess, and she turns to the witch discuss the logistics of a fortune for her unborn babe as well. 

“My baby,” Mickey whispers happily to himself, unnoticed by the adults in the room. “ _Mine_.”


	3. Day 3: Domestic

When Lisa thinks of love, she thinks, first, of her mother, passionate, out all night, screaming at her father and excusing him later as she puts make-up over the latest bruises, saying it was all part of how lovers were, the way of things, saying how Lisa would understand when she was grown up an married. 

Then, a moment later, she thinks of another type of love.

She thinks of Len, sitting in the kitchen, doing figures, looking up with a frown and saying "You know, I'm hungry -" and Mick sliding the plate he'd already prepared over to him.

She thinks of Mick falling asleep on the couch and Len walking in with a blanket, smiling at him as he tucks him in.

She thinks of how Len steals rubies and fire opals whenever they come through Central, because Mick likes the way they shine in the light.

She thinks of how Mick will get up and check the doors every time there's a thunderstorm, even though he doesn't care, just because Len feels better knowing he does it.

She thinks of the way Len is there with a wrench when Mick is just reaching for it. 

She thinks -

Len speaks to the sink in his jail cell, and Mick breaks him out the next day. 

Mick punches a man who insulted Len a day before, without them ever talking about it - where she can see, anyway. 

One gets the other his favorite sandwich without pre-arranged pick-up.

The other gets the other clothing, and food, and sweets -

And somehow, _somehow_ -

_They're_ the ones who're cursed.

Sometimes Lisa doesn't understand the world.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"- you didn't even listen!" Mick hollers.

Sung-hui winces. Too loud.

"Of course I listened," Len hisses. He prefers quiet, good boy - not too good, of course. Many good people come to her. These are not good people. 

But they need help, and that's what she does. 

"- never even -"

" - care about -"

"Out loud," Sung-hui says sternly. They startle and look at her guiltily. It happens sometimes, with them; they forget that other people don't speak the way they do.

It is both good and bad, she reflects. They love each other - madly, passionately, the way that happens in the bad stories she does not admit she reads - but their soulmates curse means that they cannot leave each other, and that creates friction.

Soulmates. They are never alone - each room they inhabit, the other inhabits with them, each chair, each painting, everything. Sung-hui once wondered, privately, what a room of nothing would do to them, but hopes they never find out.

"Out loud," she says again, as they had fallen silent, embarrassed. "Therapy not work if no one talks." That's not quite right and she knows it, but letting her accent thicken and her English falter a little reminds them that she is not them. That the voice that speaks to them is not, also, them; other people yet exist in this world.

They have trouble with that, sometimes. 

"I care about your input," Len mutters. "I just needed to make a quick call."

"I said no ahead of time," Mick points out. He's still angry. Good, very good - too often he forgives when he should not. "You knew it."

"I know," Len says, and he looks wretched. "But there were other factors -"

"You didn't tell me," Mick says suspiciously. "You _kept_ it from me, even when I was angry - damnit, Len, it was your dad?"

Len casts his eyes down.

"You told me you wouldn't do this!"

"He's my _dad_ ," Len whispers.

"You hate him!"

"He gave me _Lisa_."

"Yeah, and look what he did with her," Mick says, and regrets it a second later.

A second too late - Len crumples in himself.

Sung-hui decides it is time to intervene.

"Michael does not mean to criticize _you_ ," she tells Len. "You know this."

He nods.

"Say it."

"Mick's not criticizing me," Len repeats dutifully.

"Michael, Leonard, it appears your agreement is not working," she says. They look at her, wide-eyed. "The one about on-the-spot decisions," she clarifies.

They relax.

Silly boys; as though she would ever recommend they cut off their relationship. They fear that more than anything else - her sister is a witch, and they know this, and they cower.

No spell can break a curse that wants not breaking, but Sung-hui does not tell them that. A little fear is good, for men such as these. 

"I want you to each propose new approach," she says. "Write it down on paper, then exchange. And no peeking!"

They grumble, but comply.

Good boys.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are they too much trouble or something?" Collier asks. 

Wilson doesn't take the bait. Collier's new at Iron Heights; he asks questions a lot. Wilson's about fifty-fifty on whether he's a plant designed to figure out if they're abusing the inmates or if he's actually as young and spunky as he comes off as.

...he's gotta be a plant.

Of course, Wilson hasn't shared that little insight with anyone, so naturally Pike can't resist the opportunity to be high and mighty and all-knowing to someone who doesn't know better.

"Who?" he asks. Hayes, at his side as always, sniggers. There's not even anything funny.

Wilson reminds himself of the paycheck he gets working on the max security wing. 

"Snart and Rory," Collier asks.

Oh, Lord. Collier's got his eye on the Unmangeables. 

"What about 'em?" Pike asks.

"Well, why aren't we dealing with them?" Collier asks. "They escape or turn plead deals every few months."

"And you think you gotta way to stop 'em?" Pike sneers. Hayes sniggers again.

"No, not really," Collier says. "I'm just - do we have to accommodate for it, then?"

Wilson sighs inaudibly. 

"Accommodations?" Hayes guffaws. "They're not blind or deaf."

Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it -

"Yeah, but they're cursed, aren't they?" Collier asks.

Great.

"Curse?" Pike asks, alarmed. "What curse?"

"They're soulmates," Collier says.

"That's not a real curse," Hayes scoffs. 

"They can talk to each other when they're not there," Collier says. "Bet that's how they plan their escapes. We should try to do something to keep them from doing that if we don’t want them to escape. But, on the other hand, the cursed are a protected class, so -"

The clock hits the hour.

Wilson quietly thanks God and gets to his feet. 

The others look at him.

"Shift," he grunts in explanation, and walks out. 

"Hiya, Wilson," Rory says when he gets to cell one. 

"Rory," Wilson replies.

"Got any news for me?"

"Collier's asking questions about accommodation," Wilson replies, and moves on.

"I wouldn't worry about Collier," Snart says, when Wilson gets to cell fifteen, all the way down the hall. "We won't be here long enough for it to matter."

"Don't tell me things like that," Wilson tells him.

"You always try to get us the same cell," Snart says. "And you look the other way about Mick's matches. We appreciate that."

"Yeah, yeah," Wilson says. "There's no accommodation in the world that keep you assholes here, anyway."

Snart smirks.

They're gone by the next day. Within a week, Collier's gone on to asking about other inmates, forgetting all about putting Snart and Rory on some sort of list that the government might be inclined to take notice of.

Wilson touches his own curse-scar - nothing as benign or wicked as soulmates for him, but the military had made him force a break of it anyway - and is pleased.

He wishes them well.


	4. Day 4: Alternate Earth/Alternate Universe

"- and no cursed!"

Len stops day-dreaming very abruptly. "What was that?" he mutters to the guy next to him. 

"Oh, the boss just don't like cursed folks," the guy replies with a shrug. 

"Neo-Salemist?"

"Nah, he's not that much of an asshole. Don't think any of the guys here are -"

"There's literally a neo-Nazi across the room that I'm planning on stabbing once this job's done," Len points out. "It's basically the same thing. What's his problem with the cursed? Not like it's their fault."

"Yeah, well, apparently the first time he got thrown in the can, it was 'cause some bad-luck cursed fucked up his timing."

There's no such thing as a bad-luck curse, as far as Len's ever heard, but there are always people who fuck up.

"And, what, he's pissed at all of them?"

The guy shrugs, indifferent. "Who cares?"

"Not me," Len lies. "It's just weird, and I don't like weird."

"It ain't _that_ weird."

"If the world's greatest safecracker walked up and said he'd do your job for only five percent of the take, you get the rest, but, hey, he's cursed with technoshock, would you turn him down?"

"Obviously not."

"Would the boss?"

The guy frowns. "Well," he says slowly. "I mean. Technoshock's such a mild curse, y’know - I know plenty of people who are shit at using electronics without technoshock curses -"

Len rolls his eyes. "Bias is stupid," he says. "That's all there is to it."

He misses Mick. 

Normally, when he misses Mick, he gives him a shout, but -

Well. 

Len's on a job, which he told Mick he wouldn't do, and it's with the local Family, which he doubly told Mick he wouldn't do, and the local Family Don apparently hates the cursed, which makes it in Len's best interest not to bring it up.

He'll just have to fake it.

Len can pick-pocket, steal, and con so effectively that he's talked himself out of an arrest while ditching his gear in the policeman's own pockets. How hard can this be?

The answer, of course, is horrifically. 

"People singing in the shower is for _themselves_ ," Len hisses to a bar of soap, his voice gargled by the shower. "Did you know that?"

"I'd heard," Mick says, but he sounds dubious. "I did tell you they couldn't _all_ be soulmated..."

"Yeah, but still. It's dumb."

"You gonna tell me why you suddenly decided to go on radio silence?"

Just then someone walks in - goddamn Family couldn't even shell out for private showers - and Len has to shut up.

Len shutting up, of course, has nothing to say on _Mick_ shutting up.

Do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face while your very scary Family boss is talking to you when his paperweight is singing Bohemian Rhapsody at you?!

And Len can't even retaliate with a set of horrible puns.

Mick is _definitely_ suspicious now.

Oh, well, if he'd wanted Len to behave, he shouldn't have gotten himself thrown in jail right when Lewis was sulking around asking for money and threatening Lisa's schooling if he didn't get it.

Yes, Len's _aware_ that Lewis being around while Mick's in jail isn't Mick's fault, but damnit, Len's having to not make puns right now and it's his own damn fault, so he's going to be immature and push it off to other people. 

He's only twenty. He can do that for a bit longer before it starts getting stupid.

Len nearly makes a comment to Mick four times the next day, but only twice the day after.

He's getting better.

The plan is _totally_ working.

"I think you should go to therapy," the boss's hat says. "I found a good one. You'll like her."

Len ignores him.

"You can talk about your daddy issues."

"Oh fuck you," Len says.

Everyone in the room turns to stare at him. "What did you say?" the creaky old-but-utterly-terrifying assassin, who had apparently chosen _this moment_ to break his silence of several days running. 

"...have you ever heard of alternate universes?" Len asks.

"What?"

"Alternate universes. Like ours, but not quite," Len explains. "Where all of us are the same, but with minor differences. Differences like - you're left-handed. Or three inches taller. Or a ginger -"

"Anything but a ginger," some asshole in the back says automatically. Half the Irishmen in the room – Central’s got plenty of them – glare at him on equally automatic instinct. 

"Take me, for instance," Len says. "In another universe, I might not be a thief. Or a Jew. Or half-black. Or be able to keep my mouth shut." He pauses. "Or not be cursed."

The boss scowls. "You're cursed?!"

"I am," Len says. "And proud of it. You know what else I am?"

"What?" he growls, standing up. They're all standing up.

" _Leaving_ ," Len says, and runs out the door he's backed himself up next to.

They give chase, but this is Len's city, and they can't catch him or find him.

They all end up getting arrested two days later, so it's all for the best, but damn. That was no fun. 

Mick still laughs for half of forever about it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I still can't believe you," Mick says to the rock. "You _ditched_ me."

"Oh, shut up," the rock-Len grumbles back. "You _agreed_."

"Yeah, yeah," Mick says. "Do you remember how to do radio silence? Assuming you ever learned?"

Len carefully doesn’t respond. 

"Uh- _huh_."

"Shut up. I don't talk _all_ the time."

"Just most," Mick taunts. He watches the fire on the hill below him spread. It's a real beauty, and normally he'd be happy to sink into it, but he's got a job to do. 

Time pocket or no time pocket, someone's going to notice a pile of ash where there should be a forest. 

It takes another four hours for the Time Masters to show up.

Mick charges them, less for any prospect of success than for the fun of it.

"Seize him," the leader orders, his eyes greedy. "I know precisely how we can use - ugh! Is that the corpse of a _rat_?!"

Mick had just thrown it into his face. And yes, yes it was.

"He must've been eating them," one of the Time Masters says.

A local fox had, actually, but Mick's not going to quibble. The good thing about a time pocket, they'd figured out from Gideon, is that even the Time Masters don't know how long you've been there. 

They take him back to their base. It's shittier than Mick would've thought, what with them being Doctor Who rip-offs and whatnot. Space station stuff has always been Len's thing, not his; it was one of the ways they kept their personalities distinct from each other.

"He's the cursed one, isn't he?" the Time Master they hand him over to asks. "Soulmates?"

"Yes, Master Declan," the one delivering him says respectfully. "He's the one, alongside Leonard Snart."

"Good," Declan says, and smiles. "That just makes him easier to break."

Mick hates Declan already. 

But at least he's predictable. Oh, there's a few beatings, disrupted sleeps, that sort of thing, all while he's still dazed and angry, but they're Time Masters. They know all about deprivation chambers, and what they do to people like Mick. But Len had been right useless for a good long while after his experience, and they don't want that. They're impatient. 

They put him in a curse-breaker.

Curses might be curses, but if you don't break them by their own very particular parameters, the sense of loss and despair is practically overwhelming. A literal part of your identity is missing, all of a sudden, and you're vacant without it.

That didn't stop the government from inventing standard-issue curse-breakers, of course, ones that could work on anyone. Ones designed to cut off any curse, no matter how powerful.

When Mick comes out of it, he's vacant and ready to be filled with new thoughts, Time Master thoughts.

"Perfect," Declan says, and gets to work creating Kronos.

Or, at least, that's what he thinks happens. 

"He can't take too long on the training," Mick slurs into a pillow after a long day of pulse-rifle training and obedience commands. "Wants to avoid time-lag. He'll send me out on a few mission runs, spread rumors of my reputation around younger Rip's time, and then send me after you."

"Fuck them," the pillow grumbles. 

"Shhh," Mick says, his mouth filled with feathers as he tries to muffle himself. Stupid down pillows. 

"Gideon, what's time lag?" the pillow asks. Mick can't talk much, of course, he's supposed to be curse-broken, but Len can. Barry gave him the overrides to make sure Gideon won't report to Rip on him. "Huh. Yeah, okay, that makes sense; there's no point in grabbing you if you show up an old man that I don't recognize."

Mick nods.

"Any luck on the primary mission?"

Mick doesn't respond.

"That bad, huh. Well, nothing going on my side, neither, except for the fact that they all think I killed you."

Mick grunts.

"Yeah, even Jax, but at least Jax is on the warpath over it."

Mick snorts, amused. 

Honestly, he's not sure why.

You can't break a curse that wants not breaking, after all. The only reason the curse-breakers ever worked on the unwilling is because everyone wants their curse broken, just a little, and the curse-breaker sneaks in that way.

But Mick learned at a witch's knee how to defeat a curse-breaker, an old lesson with Sung-hui's sister to defeat his and Len's terrible fears of loss, and he fears no evil.

He smiles.

The Time Masters are in for a very nasty surprise.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Mr. Mayor, were you just talking to your lamp?” a hesitant secretary asks, as she shows his guest into the room. 

“My eyes just fixed there,” Len lies. 

He’s going to murder Barry for getting him into this whole alternate earth bullcrap. Murder, murder, murder –

“Is it budget season again?” Len’s guest asks, chuckling and taking a seat. “You only ever get that look in your eyes when taxes are involved.”

“You don’t say, Mr. Ramon,” Len says, smiling with teeth.

Cisco – sorry, _Francisco_ was his preferred name on this earth – shrinks back into his seat. “Uh, Francisco is fine,” he squeaks, true to form. 

“Are you sure I can’t get you a glass of water?” Len asks, leaning forward and pinning him with his best Mick-intimidating-a-Family-goon impression. “Some coffee, maybe?”

“Will it be poisoned?” Francisco asks.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing! I just – uh –”

“In that case, we should just get down to business,” Len says. “You know, ever since the Zoom crisis, I’ve made my feelings quite clear on the subject of… _vigilantism_.”

Also, that damn Spiderman is up to no good again. 

They don’t even _have_ comics on this earth. No wonder Cisco was forced to go into business and become a multi-millionaire. 

“Uh,” Francisco says. “…yes?”

“Of course, I’m not against it _per se_ ,” Len says, leaning back and weaving his fingers together. His old lawyer used to do that; that's who he's mimicking now. He always thought it made her look appropriately super-villainous, though. “As long as the vigilante in question is willing to come here and answer some questions first, of course – nothing as crude as registration, naturally, but a certain _cooperation_ between the government and the local superheroes seems beneficial to avoid any future Zoom incidents.”

“Right.”

He’s sweating.

And he hasn’t even kissed Len’s sister this time.

Wait, has he?

Damned if Len knows. 

Stupid alternate earths. 

“You see, therefore, why I’m…concerned,” Len draws it out. He’s starting to have fun with this, actually. Even when he actually _was_ a crime boss, he never got to do the whole intimidating crime boss thing. He just hates dealing with people too much. 

This is totally like being Shere Khan in Talespin.

…not that he watches that. Really.

He'd say he's pretending to be Lex Luthor, but that's a lie and also, that guy's an asshole. Fuck that guy. 

“Uh,” Francisco says. “Yes?”

“So we’re on the same page?”

“We…are?”

“Then why don’t you tell me the problem,” Len says. “Us being on the same page and all.”

“The…problem?”

Len pins him with a look. “Do you think this is funny, Mr. Ramon?”

“No!” Francisco squeaks. “No! Not at all! Oh god, you’re related to King Shark, aren’t you?”

Len stares.

“…please forget I said that,” Francisco whimpers.

“Sure,” Len says, deciding to just give him that one. He remembers that shark. It’d been stuck back on Earth-1, guarding ARGUS’ toys that one time he and Barry had had to break in; Mick had been his watch and had sniggered the whole time. “Tell me, Francisco, what you know about – _Reverb_.”

“Oh my _god_.”

“Yes, I agree it’s a terrible name,” Len says, because he can’t help himself.

“If you don’t stop hamming it up, I’m going to kick you,” Len’s lamp says.

Len ignores him.

Francisco looks ill. He has him right where he wants him.

“I’m sorry,” Francisco says. “This – this may be a weird question. But did your lamp just talk?”

_Goddamn vibe powers._

They’re different on each Earth, Len should’ve remembered that. 

“Do you often hear inanimate objects talk?” Len asks, arching his eyebrows, because if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s keeping calm and covering up for any flubs Mick makes on jobs. “That’s a cause for some concern, Mr. Ramon – I’m sorry, _Franscisco_ –”

“No, no! Just – I – er – forget I said anything.”

“Good,” Len says. “Now.” He stands up. “Why don’t you and me go for a walk?”

“To a short stop and a long drop?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Len says soothingly. Then he pulls out his best sharp-toothed smile again. “We’re just going to have a little chat.”

Francisco looks like he’s seriously wondering whether or not he’s updated his last will and testament properly. 

“C’mon,” Len says.

Francisco doesn’t move.

“ _Now_.”

Francisco moves very quickly when properly motivated, it appears.

Fixing the effects of Earth-2’s Flashpoint might not be as hard as it seems, Len reflects. 

“Follow me,” he says. “And we can talk about that talking lamp…”

A nearby chair sniggers.

Len ‘accidentally’ kicks it as he walks Francisco out.


	5. Day 5: Hurt/Comfort

"Just a bit longer now, Lenny," Mick says. His hands are clammy and his knuckles are white where he clutches at Len, Len notes absently. "We're almost there."

Len's not sure where they're going. 

He's not sure about - well, a lot of things. Not since they put him in the room. 

He feels his gut twist at the mere thought of it, the nausea rising in the back of his throat.

"Not far," Mick says encouragingly. His voice is scratchy and rough, almost like he's been shouting for a long time.

Len reaches out and touches Mick's throat.

Mick makes a small, strangled noise. "Yeah, don't worry about that," he says. "You always did worry about the damnedest things."

Len suddenly notices that his other arm is draped over Mick's shoulders, and they're walking - well, staggering - somewhere through a forest. And he's not being helpful.

"I can walk," he says, or tries. It comes out a bit slurred.

"What?"

Make that _very_ slurred.

"I can walk," Len enunciates.

"Don't even try," Mick says immediately. "Just keep helping me."

"Where we going?"

"Somewhere safe," Mick says. 

Len thinks about himself - barely walking, slurring, scarcely feeling Mick's warmth pressed by his side - and asks, "Shot?"

"What?"

"I get shot? Stabbed? What?"

Mick gives him an incredulous look. 

"Shock," Len points out, defense and rationale both. 

"You're bleeding pretty bad," Mick confirms. "I bandaged you up, though, a while back; you didn't notice. That ain't the issue, though, or not most of it. It was the room."

Len shudders. 

"Heard about that fucking room," Mick says savagely. "They used to use that sort of thing for medical experiments. Volunteers didn't last four days in there. Anyone left in longer just broke. Made them barely human."

That sounds about right.

It was such a simple room for such horror. A simple room with nothing in it.

But that was the worst of it. The walls were carefully padded, neither firm nor soft, and deadened all noise; there was no light, no sound, no feeling, _nothing_. 

Absolutely nothing and, worse than that, _no one_. 

"Why," Len manages to ask.

He's a thief, yes, and even sometimes a murderer, but that - that was too much. Far too much. For anyone. 

"The curse," Mick says. "Fucking neo-Salemist Doc wanted to know if we'd last longer, what with our connection."

We? Len clutches at Mick. They couldn't have gotten Mick. Len won't know how to deal with it, if they did. He'd have to kill them all. No, worse. He'd -

"He didn't get me," Mick assures him. "Just you, but it was bad enough. No objects around, nothing for you to grab onto."

That sounded terrible. 

"I could talk to you, but you couldn't perceive anything but yourself in the room," Mick continues. He makes a face. "I spoke to you, but you only screamed."

"Sorry," Len says apologetically. 

Mick rolls his eyes, but his face is strained. "Don't. Just - don't."

"Where are we going?" Len asks, belatedly realizing he hadn't asked.

"You're in shock, you're bleeding, you keep going in and out of consciousness, and we've had a version of this conversation three times now," Mick says sharply. "We are going to a goddamn doctor."

Len squints. They are, as far as he can tell, in the middle of nowhere, with forest all around.

"...when?"

"Oh, shut up," Mick grumbles. "It's not as far as it looks."

Good, because it looks pretty damn far.

Except, of course, Mick is right and it isn't, because when they get to the next clearing, a familiar figure in red is there.

"Oh, crap," he says when he sees Len.

Eloquent as always, Barry, Len thinks fondly. Finding out that the kid they'd met at what Len always liked to call the Group Therapy of the Cursed had grown up to be a superhero had definitely been a fun trip. 

Not as much of a surprise as it should've been, of course. Barry Allen _is_ afflicted with the most ancient of curses, after all.

_'You will live in interesting times.'_

Now _that's_ a proper curse.

Of course, Len and Mick also had what people thought of as a 'proper' curse, or they did after that movie about a soulmate curse gone horribly wrong won an Oscar. That's probably why they got paired with Barry by the court therapists.

Len hadn't ever really thought much of the court-mandated therapy sessions, but Mick really liked them - he loved Sung-hui, but he had a tendency to shop around that didn't surprise anyone. After all, Mick had no choice about one of the biggest decisions in his life - namely, Len - unless he wanted to break the curse once and for all, which he obviously didn't (most of the time), so he liked some ability to choose the rest of the time.

Even Mick was surprised when they were assigned to be Barry Allen's mentors for that short time. Maybe they thought they'd be able to bond over visiting Iron Heights a lot, albeit through very different methods...?

Len abruptly realizes that Mick and Barry have been talking while he's been lost in memory.

"- yeah, of course," Barry is saying. "I'm just sorry I can't run you both at the same time."

Wait. He's going to _separate_ them?!

Len must make some sort of distressed noise, because Mick turns to him right away. "I'll be there in under a minute," he promises. "But you need a doc, boss."

Len doesn't want to go. He knows it's childish, but...

"Please, Lenny."

Mick sounds legitimately distressed.

Sung-hui says that Len - who isn't always the best at reading emotions, and Mick, who isn't the best at showing them - should really make an effort to give in when Mick is that upset.

"Fine," Len sighs. 

A heartbeat later, he's moving through lightning. 

Len keeps his hands grasped tightly on Barry's shoulders and his mouth firmly shut. If he doesn't ask for Mick, he won't have to deal with no one answering. Like in the room. He's not in the room. 

He's _not in the room_ -

They're at STAR Labs, and Len's in a hospital bed, hooked up to half a dozen things.

He's not sure if it's a result of Flash speed or if he passed out, and he doesn't really want to know.

"Mick," he croaks. His throat is dry. Has he been screaming again?

"I'm here," Mick says immediately, and so he is, in the chair right by Len's bed.

“What happened?”

Mick pauses.

“I remember the woods,” Len clarifies. “And the Flash. And the room. But – before that…?”

Mick sighs and rubs at his face. “Some asshole neo-Salemists,” he says. “Doctors. Fifty percent ‘witchcraft is just unexplained science’, fifty percent ‘the Christian God when mistranslated says you shouldn’t suffer a witch to live so I won’t’ and one hundred fucking percent bullshit. They’ve been working with General Eiling, you remember him –”

Oh, boy, does Len ever remember him. He kept trying to kidnap Barry under the pretenses that he needed to be kept away from other people for their own safety, but Len broke into his office and planted bugs, and they’d figured out that Eiling was hoping that taking Barry to various troubled parts of the world would result in the ‘interesting times’ curse striking there and starting wars that Eiling hoped to benefit from. 

Asshole. 

Somehow Len’s unsurprised that he was willing to affiliate himself with the neo-Salemists. 

“– and, anyway, you don’t want to hear the whole stupid story,” Mick says. “They got the jump on you, threatening Lisa –”

As a child, Len convinced Brittany, Lisa’s mom, to take her to a witch, even though Brittany didn’t believe in any of that. It’d been mostly lying about the odds of getting a good spell because the world felt it had to balance out Len’s never-specified-around-his-dad curse, which he’d totally made up, but maybe the world did work out that way because Lisa got the gift of grace: perfect balance, agility, and the ability to swan into a room and have everyone stare in awe.

Maybe the last one was just Lisa. 

“Anyway, you paused for just long enough for them to hit you with some sort of knock-out gas –”

“I remember that,” Len says. He hadn’t been expecting them to use it on _themselves_ and counting on their allies outside to do the collection job. 

“And that’s all she wrote,” Mick concludes. 

“What happened to the doc?” Len asks. He has vague memories of faces, of sterile rooms, of _the room_ , but not much. But he knows his Mick.

“Flash got me in,” Mick says. “And I made him crispy.”

“Bet Barry didn’t like that,” Len muses.

“He saw you in the room and helped pull you out,” Mick says grimly. “He knew what it was, told me about all the studies that’d been done and what it did to people, told me _exactly_ how illegal it was and how it gave all scientists a bad name. And then he went for a walk.”

Len’s eyebrows go up. That’s – severe.

“You were in there a week,” Mick says. “Barry says the only reason your brain is still intact is because you were aware of me in some way, thanks to the curse.” 

Okay, yes, that’ll do it. 

“It was just for science?” Len asks, going back to a far less disturbing subject than Central City’s superhero’s somewhat-greyer-than-most-people-think moral system. 

“Not just,” Mick says. “ _Neo-Salemist_ scientist. Hates witches, but damn would he like to utilize its benefits.”

“Benefits?” Len echoes, confused.

“Wanted to figure out how to apply the curse to other people,” Mick clarifies. 

“But it’s a _curse_.”

Len loves Mick, it’s not that he doesn’t, but never being able to escape the man for a single moment is sometimes a bit much. You can love someone and still want to shoot them in the face (albeit non-permanently).

Not that the room was better.

Mick squeezes Len's hand. "I got you," he says. 

It's a meaningless statement, but it makes Len feel better anyway.

"Doc thought being able to communicate over long distances would be useful," Mick says, his voice still gentle. "Probably thought he could eliminate the bits where it's only one person, you can't pick who it is, and you can't turn it off."

Len nods. He can see the benefit, but the way they went about it...

"I'm here," Mick says again, probably in reaction to Len's face. "I got you."

Again, meaningless. Again, remarkably efficient at making Len feel better.

"So, the bleeding?" Len asks, swallowing a little in order to wet his suddenly dry throat. He's not one for overly long touchy-feely moments, and neither is Mick, who gratefully sits up straight again. "How long's that gonna take to fix?"

"It's stitched up, so a few weeks at least. Also, I called Sung-hui and she's agreed to make house calls."

"To STAR Labs?" Len asks skeptically.

"She arrived a while back," Mick says dryly. "She's already ushered Barry into a private room for one-on-one therapy. He just came out to get her a glass of water, and he looks like he got hit in the head with a two-by-four. In a good way."

Len smirks. "And are the others next on the list?"

"You know how Sung-hui is about people who feel like they can't get therapy because of their terrible law-breaking secrets," Mick replies, which Len takes as a sign that Team Flash will be finally seeing to its mental health needs from now on. 

"What about the city?" Len asks, the question occurring to him. He's got a good reputation, a scary one, occasional punctuated with absences, but a long one followed by a hospital stay? The Families will capitalize on that to expand back into the areas he'd cleaned them out of. And he can't rely on the Flash for cover - Barry couldn't be seen actually allying with a crime lord, not for the crime lord side of the business, and anyway he wouldn't really strike the right vibe. 

"Lisa's covered," Mick says. "And I'll be backing her, now that I know you're safe."

Len's hand clenches involuntarily. Just because he sometimes wants to shoot Mick doesn't mean he wants him to _leave_. 

"No help for it," Mick says regretfully. "Not till Lisa's established herself, though she's on her way."

Len understands the necessity. It doesn't mean he likes it.

"In the meantime," Mick says, leaning over to grab something from the floor, "I got you something that'll help."

Len frowns. He's not sure what could possibly help. Really, he's out of the room, that ought to be enough for him. He's a grown man. He has a soulmate. He's in a hospital bed, surrounded by useful objects he can use to talk to him, his presence all around. All is well. He might be irrationally unhappy with the fact that his soulmate is leaving, but he can get over it, and at any rate, nothing will help for it. 

Mick straightens up and proudly presents Len with –

Mick.

Not the living one, his stubborn, infuriating, wonderful soulmate; but rather the stupid shaggy plush animal that Len had loved the stuffing out of as a child, before he'd fully realized that Mick was _Mick_ and not the dog. It even had the singe marks from Lewis' little lessons-by-proxy. 

"You're joking," Len says, his lips twitching uncontrollably. "I thought I lost that."

"We've been raiding your dad's stashes," Mick says. "Him being dead now and all. Lisa found him, said she remembered being jealous of all the time you spent with him before your dad took him away, then she just felt bad."

He offers the plush to Len.

"I'm a grown man," Len protests. "In a public place - in front of our sometimes-enemies!"

Mick doesn't say anything, just keeps holding it out.

Len looks at that ridiculous snarl, the one that he always thought tried so hard to be ferocious but only came off as protective. 

"Oh, fine," he says, and snatches Mick away from Mick, settling him comfortably into his arms.

It's not quite the same as having the _living_ Mick in his arms, but it'll do.

Mick grins.

"I'm getting you a polar bear from the zoo," Len warns.

"The brand I got isn't being made anymore," Mick shoots back, knowing exactly what Len's referring to.

"Yeah, yeah," Len says. "Ever heard of eBay?"

Mick blinks.

Len smirks.

One terrifying arsonist-slash-supervillain carting around a polar bear plushie, coming right up.


	6. Day 6: Jealousy/Protectiveness

"How do you plead?" the court asks.

Mick glances at his lawyer, who nods. 

"Not guilty, your Honor," Mick says. "By reason of curse."

He tries to sit down - his job's done at this point, unless the judge has any specific questions for him today - but the prosecutor, who'd been standing there looking smug, is squawking and the judge looks interested.

"Explain," the judge says.

"Your Honor," Mick's lawyer says, "the prosecution is correct that my client has a history of violence - specifically arson - and that the facts clearly show that he committed the actual act of murder here, but in the present instance, we're arguing that he couldn't help himself by reason of curse."

"There is no legal basis -" the prosecutor starts hotly, but the judge holds up a hand. 

"What curse?"

"Soulmates, your Honor," Mick's lawyer says. "The individual in question was abusing my client's soulmate, causing him to react with excess violence."

"Soulmates," the judge echoes, frowning.

"There is some precedent, your Honor, albeit quite old," Mick's lawyer says. That's understating it - the cases they're submitting are over a hundred years old at least. "We'll be submitting them with our papers."

The judge is frowning, but he's also looking thoughtful. "Soulmates," he says again. "And his condition is certified?"

"Yes, your Honor. The certification was stamped and notarized by the hospital witch consultant that originally recognized the disorder upon his admission at age eleven -"

"How long ago was that?" the prosecutor snipes.

"- and again by the local hospital witch," Mick's lawyer continues, ignoring him, though he does add pointedly, "just last week."

Mick's moderately pleased that the restrictions on witchcraft in medical care have at least been lifted again, at least enough for the certification. Though getting and giving fortunes (and spells and curses) is still quasi-illegal...

"I'll accept it for now," the judge decides. "My sympathies to Mr. Rory. Is there anything else?"

"No, your Honor," both the prosecutor and Mick's lawyer say in unison, both rising to their feet for a moment to do so. 

"Dismissed, then. I'll see you again in -" He checks his calendar. "Two weeks. Does 10:30 work for you?"

Again, a chorus of consent. 

Mick walks out the side door, back to prison, but it's not long until his lawyer's scurrying out to see him. "Spoke with the prosecutor," he reports. "I think they'll give us a very favorable plea bargain, just to avoid the risk of creating new precedent that could be used by other cursed."

Mick nods. That'd been the plan all along. "And I won't have to testify?"

"For some reason," his lawyer, a very earnest Indian man named Rakesh Narayanan with a surprising capacity for subtle sarcasm, says, "I wasn't planning on letting you. Unless your position has changed from 'the bastard deserved it'?"

"Nope."

"Then no. Unless you insist - and it is ultimately up to you, I'm just your lawyer - no testifying."

"Probably for the best."

His lawyer rolls his eyes. "Tell Lenny to tell Lisa I said hi," he says. He'd been a friend of hers in school; he was pretty new at this whole defense lawyer business. "And - would it be wrong to say 'congratulations on your bereavement'?"

Mick smiles. "I'll pass it along," he promises. 

He does, sitting in the van taking him back to Iron Heights. 

"You're a dick," his handcuffs tell him, but Len doesn't sound displeased. "You didn't have to take the fall, you know."

"I've got a good defense," Mick points out. "And people get twitchy around people who kill members of their own family, even if it _is_ their horribly abusive dads."

"Still..."

Mick feels a fond smile come on involuntarily. "You're mine, Lenny," he reminds him. "If I don't take care of you, who will?"

Len grumbles but agrees. 

"Oh, and Len?"

"Yeah?"

"Congrats on your bereavement."

Len starts laughing. A little hysterically, but it's fine; Barry and the rest of the STAR Labs team is keeping a close eye on him while Mick gets prosecuted in his place. He's getting lots of therapy, which is good - after all, he's the one who killed Lewis, in the end, in order to protect Lisa. 

Mick's just the one who burned the body.

It’s not the first or last thing he’d do for Len, taking this on his shoulders, and every time he does –

He’s proud.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You know I don’t like to talk feelings often,” Len says. “But lately, I find myself compelled to discuss ‘em.”

Mick, who’d been getting out of the shower and is still only clad in a towel, freezes up and stares at Len, bug-eyed.

“Feelings,” Len says meaningfully. “Recent ones.”

“Uh,” Mick says.

“Specifically,” Len continues, “I’ve noticed that I’ve started feeling – jealous.”

“Jealous?”

Len nods. 

“Of _what_?”

“We agreed a long time ago that jealousy was probably an undeniable part of our –” Yeah, no, Len can’t manage to say ‘relationship’. “– of what we’ve got going on. After all, we never got a chance to _choose_ each other. We just – are. So, sometimes jealousy’s gonna be a factor.”

Mick nods, very cautiously.

“And it ain’t like it hasn’t happened before. You remember – there was that whole thing with what’s his name, Trevor?”

“Oh, right,” Mick says. “The asshole who kept creeping on you behind your back and I thought he was stalking you so I got in his face and started following _him_ to make him stop, except then you thought _I_ was into the guy and flipped your shit?”

“I did not,” Len says with great dignity, “flip my shit.”

“You kneecapped him.”

“He deserved it. He deliberately sabotaged the job.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t _know it at the time_. You just took credit later because it made you seem like a genius.”

Len shrugs. Mick’s not wrong. “We’re getting away from the point,” he says.

“And the point is – jealousy,” Mick says. “Uh. Are we kneecapping someone today, boss?”

He’s clearly running through every single person he’s interacted with in the last month and coming up empty.

“No,” Len says. “We’re older and wiser than we were during the Trevor incident –”

“That was only three years ago, boss. It hasn’t been that long.”

“ _Regardless_ ,” Len stresses. “I thought it’d be better to talk about it. Like the reasonable adults we are.”

Mick looks horrified. “Are you sure we can’t go with the kneecapping?” he asks hopefully.

“Not in this case.”

“If it’s because it’s me you’re mad at, we could fight it out,” Mick offers. “I’d let you beat me up.”

“I’ll have you know that if I wanted to, I could beat you up without you _letting_ me.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” Mick says comfortingly. “But – really – does it have to be _talking_? About _feelings_?”

“I’m afraid so, Mick. This can’t be solved by anything less than that.”

Mick gulps but squares his shoulders grimly. “Okay,” he says. “Hit me.”

“Recently, I’ve been feeling that you’ve been focused on – other things. Other than me. Now, I’m not saying I’m high maintenance –”

“You are the _most_ high maintenance,” Mick mumbles.

“Shut up, I’m talking here. I don’t need you to pay attention to me all the time. Hell, I’d probably punch you in the face if you did.”

Mick’s face is disbelieving, but Len glares at him and he nods in consent. Not agreement. Len knows the difference. 

“That being said, I sometimes get jealous if I feel like you’re spending more time away from me than with me,” Len says. “If I see you putting all your focus somewhere else.”

“Do I get a name at any point here?” Mick asks.

“I’m _getting_ there. I just want you to understand how I feel about your recent obsession, that’s all.”

“Wait,” Mick says. “Is this about the _cooking class_?”

“You spend all your time thinking up new things for it!” Len protests. “You’re always on the phone with your students, or with your co-workers, or trying new recipes – you’re even trying out for that stupid reality TV cooking show –”

“For the love of – that was a _joke_! The Great British Bake Off only takes Brits!” 

“Either way, I barely see you, and –”

“You massive, massive hypocrite,” Mick says, gaping starting to turn into a grin. “You, who spends literally _days_ on job planning? Who I have to literally _pick up_ to take you away from your blueprints? Who I’ve had to _sit on_ to get to go to sleep so you wouldn’t _die_?”

“You can go more than three days without sleep before you die,” Len grumbles. He’d never believed that study about it causing hallucinations, anyway. “I know you can. Besides, that’s our _livelihood_. Not some hobby.”

“My point remains: _hypocrite_.”

“I am _not_. That’s normal for me. This isn’t.”

“Awwwww, it’s okay,” Mick simpers at him. “I still love you more than my cooking class.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Len says primly.

Naturally, that’s when Mick’s eyes narrow. “And you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t have an ulterior motive.”

Len widens his eyes innocently.

“Okay, _now_ I’m worried. What’s your play here?”

“I can’t just want some assurances of your feelings?” 

“No. Spill.”

Len resists for a few moments, but a glaring, grinning, mostly naked Mick is hard to resist.

Also, Len loves bragging about his ridiculous ideas.

“So, you know that joke you made about the reality TV show?” Len asks.

“…yeah?”

“Let’s say _theoretically_ they were filming one in Central –”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard the pitch.”

“ _No!_ ”

“Superheroes and Supervillains,” Len says with glee.

Mick hesitates. “Do any of them even know how to bake?” he asks suspiciously.

“Harley,” Len replies promptly. “But Ivy’s nagging on her about salad. But seriously, think about it – the best of the worst. All the assholes we have to deal with. _Baking_. Scarlet even promised to make a appearances to help eat it all.”

Mick scowls at him.

“I’m getting Mardon to compete and made him promise he’d try to fry an egg with a lightning strike.”

“Okay, _fine_ ,” Mick groans. “I give in. I’ll listen to the pitch. But I’m warning you, I am not agreeing!”

“Of course not,” Len says soothingly. “Now, as I was saying…”

He knew that softening Mick up first would work.


	7. Day 7: Free Day

“Mick!”

Mick barely looks up from the medbay bed he’s been on the last few days, ever since the Legends flew the Waverider to STAR Labs after killing Savage. He’d been on 24/7 Gideon watch ever since they’d realized exactly _how_ badly he was taking Len’s death.

Hell, that was even why they were here, at STAR Labs, instead of travelling the timeline fixing things the way Rip had originally wanted to. The other Legends were worried sick about Mick and didn’t want to go without him, so they’d overruled Rip and demanded they stay until Team Flash gave them an answer about how to fix Mick.

Not that they could.

It wasn’t something that could be _fixed_.

A lifetime of Len’s voice in his ear – gone.

Finished.

Exploded.

Mick always thought they’d go together.

“Mick!”

He shudders a little. He can still hear him sometimes, the echo of him.

“ _Mick_! Damnit, you _know_ how I hate it when you ignore me!”

That –

That wasn’t an echo.

Mick looks from side to side, making sure no one is paying attention to him, not even Gideon, and leans over to the plate of food he’s been uncharacteristically ignoring. “…Lenny?” he whispers to the fork.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for _ages_.”

“What, really?” Mick asks, alarmed. The Time Masters had talked about time-lag – about people growing old without realizing it – stuck in a loop –

“Yeah. It’s been, like, hours now.”

No, just Len’s typical ridiculous drama. 

“I thought you got blown up,” Mick says. He’s still a bit wary, but – this feels right. 

“I did,” Len confirms. 

“Okay…and?”

“And what?”

“If you got blown up, you’re dead,” Mick points, quite reasonably in his mind. “If you’re dead, we can’t talk.”

“Uh,” Len says. “Actually…”

“You’re dead?”

“No. I mean, not really. Sort of. Has Barry ever discussed ‘the Speed Force’ with you?”

“…no?”

“Have him do that. And tell Cisco he owes me a rescue. And – oh, shit, gotta go.”

“What?! No! I just got you _back_!”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, in the Speed Force, everything is the Speed Force, and said Speed Force doesn’t exactly appreciate me getting around the whole ‘death’ thing by talking to you.”

“...are you talking to me using _Death_ as an object?”

“No,” Len says. “I’m not dead, I told you. Also, animate things don't work, you know that, and I'm not willing to try with possibly-animates. That being said, she _did_ let me borrow her necklace so I could talk to you.”

“She? The speed force?”

“No, _Death_. Keep up.”

“I’m confused.”

“Yeah, this shit’s a mess. I’ll explain later. Shh, warden’s coming.”

Mick obediently shuts up.

Then he gets up.

“Gideon!” he roars with an energy he hasn't felt since Len's nattering voice cut off. “I need Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon, _now_!”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Lisa," Len says. "Mick and I have a major life announcement to make."

"You're already married, neither of you can get pregnant, and you've already come back from the dead once," Lisa says, not looking up from her magazine. "Hit me with your best shot."

"We've decided to take someone into our little family," Mick says.

"Oh, _adoption_. Uh-huh," Lisa says, eyes still firmly on the pages. She even turns a page. "Sure you are."

"Why so skeptical?" Len asks.

"You're too wrapped up in each other to raise a kid," she says dismissively. "And you know it. So what is it really?"

"It's not a kid," Len says. "It's a dragon."

"Dragons don't exist."

"Cheep," little Smaug says. 

Lisa pauses and finally puts the magazine down.

Len beams at her.

"Is that a _mechanical dragon_?!"

"Smaug here's an AI," Mick says. "Bleeding edge future tech from the year 3000."

"3004," Len corrects.

"Right."

"You - that - it can _think_?"

"He was gonna be discontinued," Len says. 

"We decided to step up," Mick agrees.

"Oh god it can breathe fire, can't it," Lisa says flatly. It's not even a question.

"And ice," Len says cheerfully, and reaches over to tickle Smaug's belly. 

For all that he has exposed mechanical parts - fancy looking gears and cogs and circuits which are probably more decorative than functional - the majority of Smaug is covered in a very realistic synthoskin that replicates the feel of baby-soft scales. 

Smaug gurgles happily.

"If it's a computer, why is it acting like that?"

" _He_ 's an AI," Len corrects her. "And, well, he's not full grown yet. Still building up that processor power."

"It's a baby. A baby dragon AI."

"Yep."

"Yeah, no, I'm out," Lisa declares, throwing her hands up in the air and walking out.

They wait until fifteen seconds have passed and Lisa's stomps have mostly faded away into the distance.

"How long do you think we can pull this off before she realizes we only have him on loan until the time aberration's fixed?" Mick asks.

"At least a week," Len says confidently. "C'mon, let's go scare Team Flash."

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The door flies open with a crash.

Everyone in the room spins around to glare, their eyes filling with anger, the larger members of the group starting to stand and crack their knuckles with anticipation of a beating.

"Hi, there," the man at the door says. He's wearing a blue parka, rather unseasonable for the weather outside, and he's smirking like he knows something they all don't. "Please, don't let me interrupt your fascinating discussion."

"Oh, you interrupted all right," one of the biggest guys replies. "Who the hell are you?"

The new man's smirk widens. "No, no," he says. "Please, keep going - I'm sorry, were you talking about the evil conspiracy where the Jews run the world, or was it the way witches manipulate the world using their own persecution and deaths to win minor rhetorical arguments? The arguments are so similar I can scarcely tell, sometimes."

"Oh, great," one of them sneers. "One of _you_ people."

"We've got a right to be here," one of the other members of the group bleats. "We're exercising our right to assembly and free speech. In fact, you're oppressing us by interrupting, which is the exact opposite of what you claim to value."

And then he smirks, satisfied and smug that he's made his point.

"Oh, no, no," the new man at the door says. "You mistake me entirely. I've donated literal diamonds to the ACLU in support of the idea that there isn't anything legally wrong with non-violent free speech, even where I think the content of that speech is disgusting. But here's the thing you assholes overlooked -"

"What?" a member sneers.

The man at the door pulls out a gun that glows a cold blue light. "I don't much care about what's legal, personally, and since I'm not the goddamn government, your ‘rights’ don’t mean jack shit."

"Captain Cold," someone gasps, putting the pieces together at last.

"The _supervillain_?! But he's from _Central_."

"He," Len says, "is on vacation, and beating up neo-Salemists - or neo-Nazis, honestly we never really cleared up which ones you are - is really just a perk."

The room erupts in chaos, only to be silenced when Len fires off a blast to the ceiling. 

"I know this isn't going to help your unwarranted sense of persecution," Len says, musing. "But I just wanted you to know that I'm a queer black Jew who's also cursed, so, you know - yeah. I'm 'one of them' as one of you so eloquently put it."

The room flees for the back entrance only for a gout of flame to emerge from the gun of the large man standing watch there. 

"Having all the fun without me?" he asks the gun in his hands.

"Hardly," Len tells his own gun in return. It's a big room, and Mick's getting over a sore throat; there's no need to shout. "You know that what's yours is mine."

"Yeah," Mick says, grinning at his prey. He's probably regretting their promise to Barry that they wouldn't kill or permanently harm any of them, but hey, that's life. Beating them up will be nearly as satisfying, and then with luck the lesson (don’t be a bigoted shit _or else_ ) will be absorbed in a wider scale. "Yeah, I know."

And then they move.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Aren’t you supposed to be mad at me?” Mick asks muzzily. They’ve been weaning him off the good drugs, but he’s still not entirely with it all the time. Illegal clinics are good for strong drugs, though they do have a tendency to cut it off too fast. 

The clock on his bedside table huffs in offense. “I _am_ ,” it says. “But you know what these places are like! They’ll cut you off the drugs the second they think they can get away with it, which they won’t if they think you’re hallucinating.”

“Why would I be hallucinating?”

“Because you’re talking to random objects?”

“No random,” Mick says. “They’re you.”

“Sweet, but irrelevant when your medical practitioners have a very cleaned-up version of your medical history.”

"...oh."

"Anyway, what does me being angry at you have to do with anything?"

"Well," Mick says, marshalling his thoughts. "First off, you weren't yelling."

"Of course not," the clock sniffs. "I'd wear out my voice for all the yelling. Besides, I'm more the cool, calm, slinky sort of bad guy..."

Len's imagining himself as a James Bond villain again, Mick knows it. 

The term 'slinky' gives it away, really. 

"Second," Mick says, and the clock pauses in its daydream - no, Mick's not sure how he can tell, but he _can_ \- to listen. "Second, there's what you were talking about."

"What about it?"

"You were talking about your secret Harry Potter fan theory," Mick points out.

"So?"

"That's not 'angry person' conversation."

"I could list hockey stats instead," the clock offers, mild tone not hiding the bite. 

"Harry Potter is fine," Mick says quickly, because it is. It's just weird, that's all.

It's not until Len has gone off in a flounce to yell at his latest crew - he's hooked back up with Scudder and Dillon for some godforsaken reason, which is only going to end with somebody dead, Mick knows it - that Mick gets it.

Len isn't talking just for the sake of talking.

He's chatty, yes, and he loves the sound of his own voice, but he doesn't monologue. He's a dialogue sort of guy - quips and puns and stuff like that. 

No, that monologue was for _Mick's_ benefit.

So he wouldn't feel alone, trapped in a hospital bed. 

Mick snorts, fond smile spreading over his face as he shifts around a bit to get comfortable. 

Len was honestly ridiculous sometimes. 

Mick's not alone.

After all, Len's always there, all around.

Always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I wrote the middle section before what happened in Virginia, but hey, it's even more appropriate now.


	8. 8 - bonus different soulmate AU combination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An idea inspired by a combination of this fic and Romantic Universe (http://archiveofourown.org/works/6486244)

Sometime WAY back when, I wrote a fic called The Romantic Universe and the premise was “what if the only person who could kill you was your soulmate”. This week, for Coldwave week, I’ve been writing a fic in which being soulmates is a curse - in that fic, because you’re always. goddamn. together.

A mixture of the two just occurred to me: what if the reason a soulmate curse was bad was because you would, eventually, kill your soulmate. One kills the other. That’s the rule. It has to happen. No one has ever found a way in which they did not cause the other’s death - not separating, not trying not to meet, nothing. Something is going to happen. Whether it’s full on murder or “drove car too fast and hit them” or “failed to save them in time” or "died far away at sea and my belongings were shipped back to you and one of said belongings happened to be carrying plague", it’s going to happen.

Mick and Len are soulmates. They are greatly concerned about this, as are all soulmates, but there’s really nothing they can do about it.

But then they discover time travel. 

Time travel, you see, offers the possibility of _paradox_. 

In the original timeline, they never get a chance to fix their lives. Mick tried to sacrifice his life, only for Len to take his place and die. Typical soulmate curse fulfilled. 

But post Doomworld, past!Len realizes that Mick is from the future. A few words exchanged, a small hushed discussion in the heat of battle - and that’s why past!Len goes and kills future!Mick. 

That fulfills the soulmate curse. Past!Len knows it, Past!Mick knows it, and when he leaves Len back in the past, he might still erase Len’s memory because the Legends are watching him to make sure he does, but there’s no erasing the feeling that the soulmate curse has been lifted. 

And, hey, look, there’s a little note left in Len’s pocket by someone who grew up with a pickpocket for a soulmate. No one noticed that happening. 

Mick goes back with the Legends, hoping against hope but trying to steel himself for the possibility of failure. This whole thing only works if he doesn’t know that Len survived until after Doomworld, and he only had a napkin and a few minutes. He’s not as good with words as Len is. It might not have worked.

Except -

It does.

Len never quite explains what he did at the Oculus that got him out without any of the Legends noticing, and he refuses to explain why he’s been staying away so long (Mick knows why), but - yeah, sorry guys. He and Mick are _out of here_. 

They’ve gotten exactly what they wanted out of time travel.

(Back at home, Iris West clutches a gun and stares at Savitar’s body, then looks at Barry. “It’s gone,” she whispers, eyes wide. “The curse - Barry - the curse! The curse is gone!” Barry, who’d thought that Savitar’s murder of Iris was the fulfillment of the curse - and, in another universe, it was - stares back at her, unable to speak for a moment. And then they clutch at each other and start sobbing in relief. Their future is ahead of them, wide and open.)


End file.
